


decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse

by Lise



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Depression, Fall of Gondolin, Gen, I love my sad doomed son, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Maeglin Lives, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Sad, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Work In Progress, this is just kinda...gonna go where it goes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2020-12-21 12:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21075170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: Maeglin manages to tell someone what he did. Gondolin still falls. Maeglin doesn't.Or, when you attempt self sacrifice and it doesn't go the way you planned.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maeglthebagel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maeglthebagel/gifts).

> I wrote the first fic in this series for a prompt on Tumblr, and because I have always wanted an AU where Maeglin lives (because I love him, okay), and because I love stories where characters who have made horrible mistakes have to live with trying to turn their life around. Also angst. I _really_ like angst. To reiterate - as I wrote when I first posted it, "canon divergence with a whole bunch of suicidal ideation eyyyy *fingerguns*" and...yeah, that's about the way of it.
> 
> This is dedicated to Tumblr user [dumbledorably](http://dumbledorably.tumblr.com), who enables my Maeglin feelings all the time and requested that I crosspost this here. I'm probably going to write more of it, and if you want to see that earlier, I've been posting these over on [my Tumblr](http://veliseraptor.tumblr.com). Usually it takes me a few months at least to remember to crosspost things here. 
> 
> Enjoy.

He met Idril’s Edain (Tuor, he should try to think of him by name) on Caragdûr, sitting on the edge and looking down. He wondered if his father’s bones were still down there, bleached white by time. He wondered if his would be joining them soon.

“You wished to speak with me?” Tuor’s voice was wary. Did he think Maeglin had brought him here to slay him? Perhaps he did. He hadn’t exactly disguised his dislike.

“I did.” He neither stood, nor turned. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Despair washed over him. If he failed here, failed now, he knew he wouldn’t try again. He had hoped it would be easier with someone who already held him in little regard.

“Of what?” Tuor said after a long silence. Maeglin closed his eyes and heard his father’s voice.

_“So you forsake your father and his kin, ill-gotten son! Here shall you fail of all your hopes, and here you may yet die the same death as I.”_

“Gondolin is in grave peril,” he said, and it was as though something released in his chest for saying it. “The Black Foe knows its location. He will be coming to destroy it.”

He heard Tuor hiss. Awaited the question, aware that he should feel dread but oddly enough for the first time since the orcs had declined to kill him, he felt light. Whatever came next…it hardly seemed to matter.

“How,” Tuor asked, an edge on his voice, “does he know this?”

“I told him,” Maeglin said quietly. The silence stretched.

“Stay here,” Tuor said at last. “Idril needs to hear this.”

“I imagine someone should inform Turukáno.”

“You will,” Tuor said. “But…Idril first. Stay here,” he repeated again, like he thought Maeglin would run. To where, he wondered, almost giddy. Where did Tuor think there was for him to go?

* * *

He told Idril everything, though he could not look at her. Skimming over the details, because she did not need to know anything of the dark places beneath Angband, the horrors that could seep deep into bone. He meant to speak without inflection, but by the end his voice trembled, even as he felt - distant from himself. Detached.

He did not tell her what he had been promised. It was not something she needed to know, and there were some shames too great to confess.

“I cannot say how long you have,” he said, when he was done. He considered apologizing, but an apology would be woefully inadequate. The wind had picked up, and it burned his cheeks with the chill of oncoming winter.

“The path,” he heard Tuor say quietly. Not speaking to him.

“Unfinished as yet. But it can be done within the month.”

“Is that quickly enough?”

“It has to be.” Idril’s next words were addressed to him again. “Do you know when he intends to make his move?”

“I do not.”

“Too much to hope for.” She seemed to be thinking. “We need to go to my father. Preparations have to be made to evacuate the city as soon as possible. We can go to Nan-tathren, and from there to the Mouths of Sirion.”

The ground far below seemed to pull on him. He’d done what he needed to. Warned them, if belatedly (too late? Let it not be so). His part in this was over, and just as his father had said: his hopes had failed here. Perhaps it was time to die the same death.

No. That was too easy. Too quick. He would die like his mother, instead: in sacrifice.

Idril laid a hand lightly on his shoulder. “Cousin?” She said. He pulled carefully away and rose, turning.

“Your father, then,” he said. “Shall we?”

She looked at him with furrowed brows. So very beautiful. For the first time in a long time, he did not see the shadow of mistrust in her eyes, but he could not say what had replaced it.

* * *

The emptying of the city took time, but it appeared that there would be enough. No one seemed quite certain what to do with him in the meantime.

He was allowed to work in the forge, though a pair of guards shadowed him. He did not speak to them, nor they to him. Idril tried to speak to him, and her husband, but he avoided them both. To Turgon - his uncle, sometimes his father - he said more. Everything he knew, or guessed, about Morgoth’s forces, his plans. Everything he could remember. Turgon watched him with a strange mix of sorrow and anger.

He took to staying awake, watching the northern skies for signs of flame. He kept his distance from Caragdûr, from temptation.

He sharpened Anguirel to a fine edge and contemplated the end.

* * *

“I am not going,” Maeglin said, when Idril came to find him on the last day. Gondolin was nearly empty. It had taken on the feeling of a city already dead, its people drained away. Maeglin stood with his trembling hands clasped behind his back, looking Idril in the eye for the first time in months. She had her father’s eyes, which were his mother’s eyes, which were not his eyes.

“What?” Idril said.

“I will not be leaving with you,” he repeated. “I intend to stay here.”

Her jaw set. “Why?”

“If any find the passage,” he said, “They will follow you. Someone needs to stay behind and see that cannot be discovered.”

“It is hidden well. No one could find it who did not know where to look.”

“Would you gamble the lives of your people on that?” He asked, and then struck low. “Would you gamble the life of your son?”

“You know neither I nor my father would put the Gondolithrim at risk. Does he know about this folly of yours?”

“No.”

“I will inform him,” she said, voice chilly, “and you will answer the command of the High King.”

Maeglin gave her a grim smile. “I am already a traitor, Itarillë. Do you think I would blanch at countermanding Turukáno?”

Her nostrils flared. “There is no use in tossing your life away in a futile gesture.”

He cracked, ever so slightly. “Cousin,” he said, and heard the faint tremor in his voice. “Sister. Let me do this. Let me regain what slim scrap of honor I can, the only way I can.”

She stood staring at him for a long time. Then turned on her heel and walked away.

He sighed. He had hoped for - something. Anything, to make this easier, because he was tired, and afraid, and every breath he drew felt like his last.

* * *

Maeglin waited an hour before he walked out, Anguirel in a sheath at his hip. He went to the throne room and stood a while staring at the empty throne before leaving to walk outside, his footsteps echoing on stone. The northern sky was darkening, and his lungs squeezed with raw terror.

_Be strong, now. Make your mother proud._

He heard someone coming up behind him and straightened, turning in alarm. Had they missed–

It was Tuor, Idril’s husband, a set and determined expression on his face. Maeglin’s hand twitched reflexively toward his sword, but he pulled it away.

“You shouldn’t be,” he started to say, but Tuor drew a dagger. Maeglin’s hand twitched toward his own, but he stilled it, some part of him almost relieved. At least he would make it clean. Orcs would not be so generous.

“Come, then,” he said, almost with a laugh.

The hilt smashed into his temple, and the world went black.

* * *

Consciousness returned abruptly. His head ached. His memories were blurry. He’d been standing watching the sky, and - and–

There was a child peering at him with sharp grey eyes. When Maeglin’s gaze fixed on him, he smiled. “Uncle Maeglin!” He said, and then quickly lowered his voice. “I’m not supposed to be here, but-”

“You are anyway, naturally,” said Tuor’s voice. Maeglin’s whole body tensed and he started up. Fragments of memory.

“What did you do,” he said, ignoring both the child and the pulsing pain in his skull.

“Eärendil,” Tuor said, his small smile fading. “Go find your mother.”

“I don’t,” the child started to object, but Tuor leveled him with a look and he sighed, slumping out. Maeglin said nothing.

“We’re a day south of Gondolin,” Tuor said, after seeming to consider his words. “You can still see the smoke behind us. There is no pursuit.”

_A day south of Gondolin. _“What did you _do,_” he demanded again, voice rising. Tuor looked unapologetic.

“Saved your life,” he said.

“You-” Words failed him. He wanted to scream. He wanted to weep. His chance, his _one _chance and it had been ripped away from him.

“You damned idiot,” he hissed, finally. Tuor still looked unmoved.

“Swear at me all you like,” he said. “The fact is that you’re here now.”

He fought the urge to roll over and curl up, press his face to his knees like a child. “You had no right to take my choice from me.”

Tuor sighed. “Maybe not,” he said. “But Idril told me what you said, and you were wrong.”

“How do you imagine so?”

“Dying isn’t the only way. There is an entire people who have just lost their home. A thousand things that need doing. Isn’t that better than a futile death?”

_A futile death or a futile life, _he thought miserably, but he just stared at Tuor, until he looked away.

“I am going to tell Idril you have awoken,” he said. “She will be pleased to hear it.”

He walked out, leaving Maeglin alone.

He shuddered and put trembling hands over his face. His heart throbbed in his chest, insisting on continuing to beat, as though it had any right to do so.


	2. Chapter 2

The moment he was left alone, Maeglin stumbled to his feet, untethered the nearest horse, and set off back toward the smoke and flame still visible on the horizon.

He’d barely made it half a league, struggling to keep his seat between the nausea and the ache in his head, when Idril’s human caught up to him and swerved in front of him to cut him off, his expression taut and angry.

“Get out of my way,” Maeglin said coldly.

“Where are you going?” Maeglin just stared at Tuor, not answering, and his face hardened further. “No.”

“You had no right to take my choice from me,” Maeglin said harshly.

“And what of the choice you took from the rest of us?” Tuor asked. “When you told our Enemy where to find us, and forced us from our home?”

Maeglin flinched, though he tried to hide it. “Then you should understand why I must go–”

“And fall into his hands once again?” Tuor said, his voice biting. “Where you will give in, once again, and tell him where we have gone?”

The words lanced through him like his father’s javelin and he hovered for a moment between misery and rage before settling back into the dull numbness that had protected him these past weeks.

“No,” he said. “I will not. I will ensure I do not live that long.”

Tuor’s eyes flashed and his lips pressed together. His horse danced a few steps to the side, answering her rider’s tension. Maeglin pressed on.

“If this is some misguided effort for my cousin’s sake,” he said, “you needn’t tell her you caught up with me.” He met Tuor’s eyes squarely. “Walk away.”

Tuor’s jaw set. “No,” he said again.

His temper flared. “Why not?” He demanded, voice rising. “We both know you bear me no love. I am a traitor. I placed you, your family, your _son _at risk. I wrought - _that._” He gestured to the horizon, dull red and black. “Why this sudden determination–”

“It is too easy,” Tuor said. “You need to make reparations.”

A snarl burst out of Maeglin’s throat and he urged his horse forward, nearer Tuor’s. “There are no _reparations,_” he said. “And if you think it will be _easy–_”

His throat closed and he brushed memory away. He didn’t know if he would be dragged back to Angband or killed out of hand, but either way he did not expect it would be clean. He had spent a night and a day listening to the screams of his companions before they died. Maeglin’s captors watching him, waiting for him to flinch.

“Go back to your wife,” he said. “No one will thank you for intervening here. _I _certainly will not.”

Some of the anger left Tuor’s expression, and without it he just looked sad, and weary. Maeglin turned away, steering his horse with his legs to go around him.

“Wait,” Tuor said. Maeglin did not look back, and did not reply, nudging the horse into a trot though the gait jarred his aching head.

“Hasn’t Idril lost enough of her family?” Tuor called after him. That burned, in a way Maeglin was certain Tuor could not know. He bit his lip hard enough that it almost split between his teeth. “You are the last remaining link High King Turgon has to his sister. Your mother.” Breathing hurt. “And what of her? Would she want you to throw your life away, when she sacrificed hers for you?”

That brought him up, and Maeglin turned his horse sharply around. “Do not invoke my mother to me,” he said. His eyes stung and there was a lump in his throat. He was tired, so tired, and he just wanted to slip from this horse and lie on the ground until his fëa fled and his flesh disintegrated into nothing.

“I will invoke whatever it takes to convince you to come back.”

“You cannot!” His eyes prickled and Maeglin hated himself for wanting to weep. He was heartsick and tired and weary of living, and yet a part of him still feared the dying (_coward_). He could feel Tuor looking at him and clenched his jaw until he could control himself.

“Return with me,” Tuor said at length, his voice quieter. “Take one week. Help your people. At the end of that time if you have not reconsidered, I will not stop you.”

He looked again toward the red and black sky. It would be more noticeable for him to vanish in a week than now. There would be more eyes on him, and less chance to slip away. His chest tightened.

A twitch, a thought, and his horse lunged forward. Tuor must have expected it, though, because the moment he moved something hard struck him in the head. He didn’t feel himself hit the ground, but there he was, horse a few paces away and blinking dazedly at the sky.

Tuor crouched down next to him with a sigh. “I was truly hoping you would listen to reason,” he said. Maeglin glared at him, wordless, and Tuor shook his head, expression a mixture of exasperation and ruefulness.

He lashed Maeglin’s wrists together and dragged him back. The only mercy was that he removed the restraints before they were seen by anyone else, though his hand on Maeglin’s arm was unmistakably a restraint in itself.

He could have broken free. For some unknown reason, he didn’t. Perhaps because the anger was gone, leaving behind only a dull, wretched exhaustion and a throbbing, spinning head. Idril was sitting in his tent when they entered, though he could not read the look on her face. Even here, she seemed to shine, and his heart ached with the same painful, irrepressible longing.

“You found him,” she said, not to him but to Tuor.

“I did,” Tuor said. “Making for Gondolin.”

“I can speak for myself,” Maeglin said, though he did not much want to. She turned her grey eyes on him, then.

“And what would you say?” She asked, and Maeglin marshaled all his arguments, the ones he’d given Tuor, but under her gaze they fell away. _Hasn’t Idril lost enough of her family?_

In the end, he said it as simply as he could. “This mercy is one I cannot bear.”

She stood, and stepped toward him, and he had to fight not to flinch back. “If that is so,” she said, “is that not reason you should bear it?”

The knife in his heart twisted and something in him crumpled. His eyes fell to the ground.

When she put it like that…she wasn’t wrong. Perhaps staying, a fading shadow, was the best punishment there could be.

His shoulders fell. “Very well,” Maeglin said at length, his voice heavy. “You have made your point.” He moved around her and sat himself, and did not dare look at either of them. She left without speaking further, and her husband followed a moment after, leaving him alone.

_Would she want you to throw your life away, when she sacrificed hers for you?_

His mother, who had loved him, cherished him, brought him up on stories of a world larger than the shadows of Nan Elmoth. Who would, unquestionably, look at what he’d become and spit in his face. _Ill-gotten son. _His grandfather had ridden to challenge Morgoth at his gates, and wounded him.

Meanwhile, he had betrayed his own people at first opportunity.

Black despair rolled over him and Maeglin buried his face in his hands and wept, for the first time since he had stumbled out of Angband, and did not stop until he was empty: of tears, of misery, of everything.

That, he thought, was how he would survive this. Numbness, and nothingness. And perhaps when they reached their destination by the sea…it would have been enough. He was Doomed as it was, after all, doubly-cursed: his cousin and her mortal were only delaying the inevitable.

The thought soothed him.

Maeglin stood up, composed himself, and went to see what needed to be done.


	3. Chapter 3

For the next week, Maeglin kept his distance from everyone he knew.

He woke early and went to sleep late. Ate his meals alone and at a distance. He avoided all those of his own house, and even more so all those of his family: Idril, Tuor, Earendil.

Turgon.

His mother’s brother, who had taken him in, and cared for him, and raised him up, and he had repaid him with betrayal. _Ill-gotten. _He had the feeling that Turgon was avoiding him as well.

When he slept it was poorly, muddled and ugly, and sometimes he woke with tears streaming down his face.

They moved closer to the Grey Havens. The sky behind them had cleared, the fires gone out. The beautiful white city he’d gaped at on first seeing, awestruck, would be a despoiled ruin now.

Would Morgoth know that Maeglin had confessed? He supposed it didn’t much matter. He would slit his own throat before being taken to Angband again. As he should have the first time.

* * *

It had been five days when he returned to his tent to find Idril waiting outside. He froze when he saw her, and did not manage to flee before she turned and saw him.

“Cousin,” she said, unsmiling. “May I join you?”

He gathered himself. “Of course,” Maeglin said. “You are welcome.” She stepped aside to let him enter first, and he did so. Her expression was difficult for him to read, but her grey eyes were bright.

“I’ve seen little of you the past few days,” she said.

“I have been busy,” Maeglin said carefully. “Itarille - why are you here?”

She examined him with her piercing gaze that had always seemed to see through him. He’d loved her. Still did, deep in his heart where he could still feel things properly. Had, maybe, since she’d drawn him up from where he’d been kneeling at his mother’s bedside and holding her cooling hand. _Come, cousin, _she’d said, with so much kindness._ Let me take you away from here._

“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said. “All of us. My father, too.” Maeglin saw no point in denying it, and held his tongue. “You cannot hide away forever,” she said, some sharpness sliding into her voice.

“I don’t need to,” Maeglin said. “Just long enough.”

“You still intend to leave,” she said.

_I intend to die. _“Not now.”

Her lips twisted, but a moment later her shoulders slumped and she just looked tired. “Lomion,” she said, and he startled a little at his Quenya name in her mouth. “You are still my cousin.”

_As Eol will always be my father. _“I know,” he said heavily.

“I do not want you dead.”

Perhaps that ought to have comforted him, but it just felt heavy. Another weight on his shoulders. After all, she had made clear to him that she wanted him alive because he didn’t deserve the peace of Mandos’ Halls. “What are you asking me?” he said bluntly. Idril regarded him.

“Dine with us,” she said.

He cringed from the idea of sitting with her and Tuor and their child for a meal, and turned away to toy with some of his belongings. “My apologies,” he said. “I cannot.”

“Cannot or will not?”

“Will not.”

There was a silence, and then Idril said calmly, “Why?”

Maeglin gave her a weary look. “Is it not obvious?”

“Say it isn’t.”

“Cousin,” Maeglin said, “I am weary. And I have no interest in an invitation given out of pity. Or to make a point.” She narrowed her eyes, but didn’t dispute his assessment, and he turned away again. “If it was meant as a kindness - thank you. But I will not come.”

Again he thought, _it would have been better if I’d never come back._

“If I am making a point,” she said at length, “it is only that it is by your will that you stand outside, not ours.”

“I am aware.”

He could feel her frustration, but it seemed like a distant thing. She drew near and Maeglin tensed, but all she did was lay a hand lightly on his shoulder. He tried not to shudder. “I am angry,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I am going to be angry forever.”

_You should be. _He said nothing.

“We didn’t save your life for you to throw it away,” she said.

_Then why did you? _He didn’t ask. He wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know.

“Earendil is curious about his uncle.”

“How?” Maeglin blurted out. “How can you forgive me? Any of you?”

“I haven’t,” Idril said bluntly, and he couldn’t stop his flinch. “Not yet. But I certainly won’t if you die. And I won’t get the chance if you never put in the effort to show me why I should.”

He pressed his lips together until he thought he could control his voice, and then said, “I don’t think you should.”

“Isn’t that up to me?”

“What about your husband?” Maeglin said, almost desperately. “What does _he _think?”

“He was the one who went back for you, wasn’t he?”

Maeglin shook his head. His chest was tight and it felt like he couldn’t breathe. “I don’t want this,” he said, and it was thin and plaintive, pathetic. He remembered weeping in the caverns of Angband, afraid and alone and spiraling ever downwards. He’d broken there. What was left now? What was left?

Idril sighed. “I know.”

“Will you not have a little mercy?”

Her hand fell away from his shoulder. “No,” she said, her voice hard again. “Not the kind you’re asking for.”

He closed his eyes and took shallow breaths. “_Please._”

“No,” she said again, but this time he heard a faint tremor in her voice, wavering. “Never.”

“Then go,” he said, despairing. “Allow me that choice, at least.”

He expected her to refuse that, too. But a moment later he heard her leave. Maeglin stood carefully still, trying to catch his breath. Trying to remember how to breathe. Every inhale seemed to choke him.

_Oh, mother, _he thought. _You gave your life for this?_

His eyes fell on Anguirel, gleaming darkly. He sat studying its edge and trying to think of nothing at all.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another little bit in this, featuring "things continue to be bad for Maeglin." I have no plans for where this is going, just that it is, apparently, still going.

They were nearly halfway to the Havens of Sirion before Maeglin realized that there were only three people who knew what he had done.

It struck him sitting alone, sleepless in the dark, and he started up, though the moment after he thought it it seemed obvious. If it were broadly known that he was the traitor who had given up Gondolin’s location, that he was the reason they were now homeless wanderers, that he had betrayed them all because he was weak and a coward-

He doubted that Turgon’s word would be enough to keep him alive.

What explanation had been given for his behavior? The guards that had watched him in the weeks before they left the city - what had they been told? What had been said about his choice to remain behind?

Perhaps it was explained as an act of noble heroism.

That bent him over laughing until he couldn’t breathe and just shook with it, his chest aching.

* * *

The Havens of Sirion had become a kind of signal fire. A fixed point in time and space that he could orient himself to. At night when he lay awake with thoughts spinning, he contemplated what would happen when he came to it. Idril said _I do not want you dead. _He and Tuor had not spoken since his first attempt at escape, when the Man had dragged him back. Maeglin was not certain if he was avoiding his uncle or if his uncle was avoiding him.

_I do not want you dead. _He ought to be pleased with that, perhaps. It seemed the closest he had ever come to his cousin’s favor, even if it was no favor but a desire to see him pay for his crime by living.

Once they reached the Havens of Sirion, he told himself, it would be easy enough to slip away. He spent enough time in solitude that it would take some time to mark his absence. By then he could be well away. Once they reached the Havens of Sirion, the Gondolithrim would have a home, a sanctuary, in place of the one that they had lost. Once they reached the Havens of Sirion–

He would have done - not enough, never enough, but there would be no more. He was already emptied out. All that he needed was to reach that signal fire, and then he could turn and fade back into the dark.

“It will be you and I,” he said to Anguirel. “Perhaps we will ride north, like my mother’s father, and see how far we get.”

“Who are you speaking with?”

Maeglin fell perfectly still, one of his hands curling into a fist, eyes closing. “Where is your mother,” he said, in lieu of answering. “Or your father, for that matter.”

“Over there,” Eärendil said, and it must have been accompanied by some sort of gesture, but Maeglin did not turn to look at him. “There’s no one else here.”

“No,” Maeglin said. “There is not.” He had never had much of an instinct for children, and still less with this one, and still less now. He had been symbolic of a hated bond, but if that was gone now he was just another member of a family that he did not feel he could claim.

“So who were you speaking with?”

“No one,” Maeglin said, after a few moments of silence. “Myself.”

“Was it no one or yourself?” Maeglin opened his eyes, frowning, and found Eärendil’s grey eyes clear and altogether too innocent. Of course he would be clever, like his mother. Who had apparently had a streak of mischief in her youth, though Maeglin had seen it little.

That line of thought gave him a pang, and so he held it close with the other knives that pierced his heart.

“Are you here for some reason, or simply because your parents are busy,” Maeglin said. Eärendil’s face fell a little. _You should be kinder, _chided a quiet voice, but it was quiet, and he had no more kindness in him anyway. If he ever had.

“I’m here because I wanted to see you,” he said, apparently determined not to be put off.

“Is that so,” Maeglin said blandly. Eärendil frowned at him.

“Naneth says that you are-” he seemed to be trying to recall exact words. Or perhaps trying to think of more diplomatic phrasing. “‘Troubled,’” he said, finally. Maeglin gritted his teeth and let out a short laugh.

“I suppose that is one way of putting it.” Eärendil’s brows knitted together, and Maeglin shook his head. “I am not good company for you, boy. Go on and find your grandfather.”

He didn’t move to leave. “Why?” he asked. “Why aren’t you good company?”

The strangest blend of rage and despair and exhaustion rolled over Maeglin like a wave, and he lowered his head into his hands, suddenly unable to bear his own weight. “Because I have done terrible things,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Your mother knows,” Maeglin said. “Ask her.” There was a hard edge in his voice, like bitter iron. He forced his hands down from his face and gave Eärendil a cold stare. “You are younger than I was when I watched your grandfather execute my father. But you are old enough to know some truths.”

Eärendil’s blue eyes were wide, and Maeglin wished he hadn’t spoken. “Your father was…”

_Do not speak to me of my father. _“Go,” he said. “As I said. I am no fit company.” He stood and walked as swiftly as he could away, not knowing where he was going, only knowing that he needed to move and needed to be out from under this child’s eyes.

He wondered what Idril would tell him.

* * *

When he dreamed, his dreams were all of darkness and cold fire, and the fear that ripped the soul to shreds. His mother had been there, in the dungeons of Angband. Even now, Maeglin wasn’t certain if he had dreamed her or if she had been some phantom of Morgoth’s making.

There, she had been kind. Now, she cradled his face in her hands and said _you deserve this._

Waking, he rose and walked out into the night, looking up at Varda’s stars, the cold in his bones. After a long time of simply standing still he took a deep breath and turned back, fetching Anguirel before heading for the edge of the camp. It was not too hard to slip past the posted guards - they were watching for intruders coming in, not going out. There was no cover, not here, but the night sheltered him.

Raised in darkness, fallen back into it. _Child of twilight, _Aredhel had named him, in defiance of Eol, in the tongue of her youth.

Maeglin walked with no real destination or intention, the sword heavy at his side. He looked north, toward where Gondolin had lain. There was a soft wind that brushed against his face like a caress, and he realized slowly that he was weeping, without sound.

If there had been someone to beg, he might have begged: _have mercy. _Instead he drew Anguirel and wrapped his hand around the blade. It did not seem to hurt as much as it should.

He returned as quietly as he had gone and bandaged the wounds. _How long, _he wondered. _How long._

* * *

The High King summoned him.

That was how it was put: _the High King summons you. _Maeglin picked at the words, trying to decide what they meant. Interpretation, or exact words? Was it that Turgon believed Maeglin would not obey, otherwise, or because he sought to distance himself, speaking not as family but as the voice of ultimate authority?

Regardless, he went. Of course. He didn’t know what to expect; they’d scarcely spoken three words to each other since Maeglin’s confession of what he had done. That this silence was ending now…

A slight unease curled through Maeglin’s body before he quashed it. What did it matter? The worst Turgon could do was order his execution, and that did not truly fall under the category of _worst._

“You wished to see me,” Maeglin said. Turgon stood with his back turned, and they were alone - no attendants, no Idril, no Tuor. Just the two of them.

“Yes,” Turgon said. It sounded as though it took great effort. “I did.”

“May I ask what it is regarding?”

“We have spoken little of late.”

“We have,” Maeglin said slowly. “I guessed you were busy.”

“I have been. But I have not meant-” He broke off. Maeglin thought it was probably because he did not wish to lie. “Idril brought it to my attention that you have been - isolated.”

“Of my choice, High King,” Maeglin said, and thought he caught a faint twitch of Turgon’s shoulder, but little more. He still had not turned.

“Of your choice,” Turgon echoed, and Maeglin could not read what was in his voice. He turned, at last, and his face was no easier to read but that he seemed weary. “Since your mother’s passing,” he said, “I thought of you as a son.”

A part of Maeglin thought _did you, truly, or did you want to think of me as such while resenting me in your heart as the get of your sister’s murderer. _The other part of him only flinched at the past tense, and wanted to ask _and what do you think of me now? _“You gave me great honors,” he said instead.

“I have tried to think how I did not see it,” he said, voice quieter. “How I failed to notice that something was wrong.”

_I was a skilled performer, _Maeglin thought, and, _because you saw what you wanted to see._

“I think I did not want to,” Turgon said. “Because if I acknowledged the possibility that you might not have escaped capture as you claimed, then…the law would require that I put you to death as a potential spy.”

A laugh bubbled up in Maeglin’s throat and he forced it down, holding his silence.

“If I had,” Turgon said, still quieter, “without your warning…it seems likely we would not be alive now.”

Maeglin blinked, swayed back. “You were in danger at all only because of my treachery.”

“That is the irony, isn’t it?” Turgon huffed, a sound that was not quite a laugh. “Were it not for you, the city would not have fallen. Were it not for you, its people would not have survived - or at least, far fewer would have.” He shook his head, his grey eyes moving from Maeglin’s face. “Only I wonder if Ondolindë was Doomed from the moment of its founding, as all our works are.” The melancholy was heavy in his voice, and Maeglin did not know what to say. What he _should _say.

“My lord,” he said, halting, “is there aught you wish of me?”

“No,” Turgon said, after a long and strangling silence. “Nothing.”

He did not realize until those words were spoken that he had hoped for something. That he had wanted Turgon to want _something, _even if it was to send him away, even if it was a sentence of death, even…

He bowed, and turned to leave, relieved only that it did not seem Idril had mentioned her other concerns regarding his intentions. And at the same time-

At the same time, he was reminded of how it had been in the years after his return from Morgoth’s embrace. The dread of discovery, and at the same time the yearning for someone to see, to realize, to understand. To look at him and say _Maeglin, what ails you?_

He quashed the desire.

“Hold,” Turgon said suddenly, and Maeglin stopped, glancing back. He gestured. “What happened to your hand?”

“An accident,” Maeglin said after a moment. “I was careless.”

Turgon scanned Maeglin’s face, eyebrows furrowed, and finally nodded. Maeglin bowed again, and this time departed without interruption.

* * *

The wind was beginning to carry an unfamiliar scent - Maeglin did not know it, but he guessed that it was the sea. It was faint yet, but it portended an end to their journey. He closed his eyes and imagined it, or tried, but he had no idea what it would look like. Vast, he knew. And invisible, on the other side, Valinor. A place as distant as Varda’s stars, and as unreachable.

He opened his eyes, hearing someone approach, but did not turn.

“Maeglin,” said Idril’s husband.

“Yes,” he said.

“May we speak?”

“We are now, are we not?” He flexed his bandaged hand. The cuts underneath were mostly healed now, but he had left them wrapped. There was a long quiet, and at last he turned with a sigh to meet Tuor’s clear, bright eyes, his direct gaze.

“It has been more than a week,” he said. It took Maeglin a moment to parse the statement, and then he remembered.

“It has,” he agreed.

“You have not left,” Tuor went on. “Does this mean you have reconsidered?” Maeglin tried to read what was in his voice, but could not find anything to read: no hope, no caution, no disappointment. He wavered between honesty and falsehood, but of all those he knew here this Edain was easiest to speak truth to.

“No.”

“No,” Tuor echoed, and Maeglin thought he could hear it there: the faintest traces of disapproval. He let out a faint laugh.

“No,” he said. “I have not reconsidered.”

Tuor frowned at him. “What amuses you?”

He didn’t know how to explain. “Nothing. Do you ask because you intend to try to dissuade me? Because you, as Idril, believe I deserve this condemnation? You said you would not.”

That steady regard did not change. “It isn’t meant as a condemnation,” he said. Maeglin stared at him.

“That is not what you said before,” he said. “_It is too easy. _Those were your words.” Tuor said nothing, and Maeglin looked away from him, breaking his gaze. “I will follow until the Mouths of Sirion,” he said. “I will remain until you reach your new home. But no further.”

There was frustration, Maeglin thought, in that furrowed brow.

“I am not yours,” he said, with some desperation. “Nor hers. If some scrap of me remains still my own - allow me some choice.”

Tuor exhaled slowly. “I said I would not stop you.”

“And your wife?” Maeglin asked. “Will she?”

“I do not have command over her.”

No. Of course not. And Idril’s will was insurmountable. But he did not need to overcome her will; only her watch, and that he thought he could do.

A peculiar relief swept through him.

“I have never wanted to be your enemy,” Tuor said into the silence between them.

“I didn’t believe you did,” Maeglin said. “Only I wanted to be yours.” He sketched a slight bow and moved to go past him, but Tuor caught his arm.

“I will not stop you,” he said, “but I will say that I don’t think you should go immediately. Give it another week after our arrival while things settle.”

For some unknown reason, he was almost tempted to agree. Perhaps because he was being asked to stay, and some foolish part of him yearned for that ersatz welcomeas much as he always had. The desire to belong, the desire to be wanted.

He detached himself, though gently. “No,” he said. “I have waited long enough.”

* * *

“How long?” Maeglin asked aloud, and a soft voice whispered back to him, _soon._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still here, I guess! Still writing periodically in this fic. As I said to a friend, "I have thoroughly wrecked my boy and I keep trying to put him back together but he just falls apart even more." So that's what's happening here. 
> 
> Content warnings that have applied for this whole fic apply here as far as suicidal ideation, but especially active, dire, and intense during this chapter. 
> 
> To everyone who has been reading and commenting on this verse, here or on Tumblr - you're my favorites and I love you.

The sea was a splendid thing.

Maeglin had tried to imagine it, but his imagination had not done it justice. The vastness of it, the motion, the way the light flickered off the waves. It was unfathomable, unknowable, endless. Maeglin thought he could fall into it and never stop falling.

He was glad, briefly, that he had remained long enough to see this. He could carve it into his mind, a last thing of beauty before he sought out his end. It was not deserved, but he would, selfishly, claim it nonetheless. This: the sun falling where the endless sea met the endless sky.

Taking a deep breath of the salt air, he turned his back and walked over to the pack he had assembled. He wasn’t bringing much. He didn’t expect to need much, and was not inclined to take much needed supplies from those who deserved them more.

Maeglin glanced back toward the west. Somewhere far away, he thought, was Valinor. His mother’s birthplace, where perhaps one day she would return; where he would never go. “I will not make you proud,” he murmured, “but at least perhaps I can cleanse some of your shame.”

His eyes stung and he blinked once, hard, controlling himself before he walked away for the last time.

* * *

A horse would carry him faster, but Maeglin had decided against it. He had been tempted - he could mirror the High King’s famous ride that way, though he would never get so far as the gates of Angband. But the horses, too, might be needed at the Havens, and any mount he brought with him would likely perish when he did. He did not need to condemn a horse needlessly to a death it didn’t deserve.

So he walked, as his mother’s brother had walked, into the falling night. He did not stop when it was dark, but kept moving, pace steady and even. For the first time in months, his head felt clear.

For the first time in months, since Idril’s husband had dragged him away from Gondolin against his will, he knew what he was doing.

There was a profound relief in that. A profound release. At last, at last, it could be finished.

* * *

Mid-morning, the day after he left the Havens, he heard the pounding of hooves behind him. His jaw tightened, but he stopped walking, bitterness welling up hot and thick in his throat.

_So much for letting me go._

He didn’t bother to run, or hide. Just stopped, and turned, and waited to see who was following, not entirely sure who to expect, but not surprised when he saw who it was.

“You,” he said sourly. Tuor looked down at him from the back of his horse, expression neutral.

“Maeglin,” he said. “You did not bring a mount.”

“I did not. What do you want?”

Tuor studied him for another few moments and then dismounted. He gave the horse a slap on the rump, sending it back toward the Havens. Maeglin frowned after it.

“What are you doing?”

“Joining you.”

Maeglin blinked once and stared blankly at the man, for several moments quite sure he’d misheard, or at least misunderstood. Tuor just looked back at him, though, gaze level and steady.

He regathered himself and said, “no.”

Tuor shook his head. “I was not asking.”

“I am still refusing you. Does Idril know you are here?”

“Do you think I would leave without informing her, as you did?”

It was pointed, of course. Maeglin did not let himself flinch from it. “I assume nothing about what you would and would not do, considering you said you would not stop me from leaving and yet here you are.”

“I haven’t stopped you,” Tuor said.

Maeglin’s jaw tightened. “Go back,” he said. “I do not want you here, and you do not want to be here. I have no notion what you think you’re doing, but it is needless, and foolish.”

“No more needless and foolish than what you are.”

Maeglin held back his snarl. The calm he had so briefly possessed was rapidly evaporating, and he wanted it back. “You cannot stop me,” he said. “Nor save me. You have done so once, against my will. I will not allow it again.”

“Unless I am mistaken, you didn’t allow it the first time.” Tuor still did not move. Maeglin took a shallow breath through his nose.

“Do you not understand?” he demanded. “I am going to my _death, _Adan.”

“I understand that is your intent.”

“I will not be responsible for yours.”

“Then I suppose you will have to prevent it.”

Maeglin’s breathing quickened. Anger and fear and hatred tangled together, and he grasped after some semblance of self-possession. “No,” he said again. “Go back. Go home to your wife and your son.”

“You asked me to allow you some choice. Will you not permit me mine?”

He wanted to scream. He wanted to tear out his hair. He wanted to grab Tuor by the shoulders and shake him. Or hit him. He wanted him gone; he wanted him dead. “What do you want of me?” he demanded. “What is your goal, here? Do you desire confirmation of my demise? Then do it yourself, by all means. I will even provide you with the blade.”

Tuor shook his head. “I have no interest in your death, Maeglin.”

“Then _why._”

Tuor’s expression hardened. “Because I intend to see that you survive.”

There was a thundering in his ears. “Have I not made clear enough-”

“You have,” Tuor said. “You have. But I will not accept it. And if I cannot stop you from going - then I will go with you. And if you do not want Idril to grieve - and I am quite certain you do not - you will not leave me alone and in peril among enemies.”

Iron bands were tightening around his lungs. “You are gambling your life on this?”

“I do not consider it a gamble.”

Maeglin clenched his jaw until his teeth ached. Hatred bled into despair bled into a numb resignation. He turned his back. “I could simply knock you unconscious. Without your horse, you could not match my speed.”

“There are wild beasts here. And you cannot be certain there are not worse.”

His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped animal. A scream built up in his throat and caught there. An overpowering anger shook him like a dog with a rat, and was just as quickly gone, draining out of him and leaving him empty.

He closed his eyes, the glimpse of freedom, of relief, slipping away. “When will you consider it punishment enough?” he asked, soft and hoarse.

“Must it be punishment?” Tuor asked. “Can it not be opportunity?”

_You do not understand, _Maeglin wanted to howl. _I am broken. I am rotten at the core, a ruined thing. There is nothing left of me but ash._

_I am so tired of lingering on._

He turned away and started walking once again without responding. Tuor caught up to him, keeping pace even as Maeglin lengthened his stride, but at least he did not try to talk.

* * *

He stopped at midday to eat a small meal, ignoring Tuor as completely as he could. He found himself thinking of his and his mother’s flight from Nan Elmoth. What if they had never gone? Or what if he had convinced Aredhel to go alone?

Would she still be alive now? It was him that Eöl had meant to kill. He imagined, for a moment, a world in which he had died there in Gondolin at the end of his father’s poisoned javelin, and his mother had lived.

_If you could see me now, would you regret saving me?_

“Why did you tell me?”

Maeglin did not look in Tuor’s direction, nor answer. His heart was a stone in his chest.

“I have wondered that. Why you confessed to me, and not to Idril, or the High King.”

_I tried, _Maeglin thought. _More than once, I was on the point of it, of saying…but it was easier, with you, who I hated, who was my enemy, who had never borne me any love. _He said nothing.

“Idril feels she should have known.”

A bitter sound burst from between Maeglin’s lips. “She knew enough to be suspicious. How much more should she have guessed?”

“Enough to ask the right questions.”

Maeglin shook his head. “I would not have answered.”

“What changed? Why did you speak then, to me?”

He closed his eyes for a moment, then stood. “Does it matter?”

“Does it?”

“No,” Maeglin said. He should have done it then, on the cliff. It would have been such a small step. A small step, a long fall, and it would have been finished. Why had he thought it was worth waiting? Why had he thought it would matter if he lived? Had he truly believed there was any redemption to be found, any chance at making amends?

_Ill-gotten son._ Anguirel felt heavy in its sheath.

Eöl had been right, in the end.

* * *

Maeglin dreamed of the darkness beneath Angband. He lay trembling with his back to the wall. His eyes were closed as though it made a difference; the horrors were in his mind, not before his sight.

Maedhros had endured torments at Morgoth’s hands for years until his rescue. It was becoming clear to Maeglin that he was no Maedhros. That he was going to break, and it was only a matter of when.

He woke up weeping, curled into himself with his hands over his ears as if that could shut out the whispers. Maeglin lurched to his feet, relieved to see that Tuor was still sleeping. He stared at him there, shudders running through him.

_What if I am still there, _he thought dizzily. _What if I never left?_

He fell back into himself, head clearing. His body felt too small, the confines of his flesh a cage. It occurred to him that he did not need to wait. Did not need to seek death in sacrifice. Anguirel’s edge was sharp. It would not be _clean, _would not be _honorable, _but was there any of that left for him anyway?

Tuor stirred, and woke. The moment slipped away.

“Maeglin?” he said.

He sank back down to the earth, too empty to weep though he wished he could. There was nowhere, he was beginning to understand, that he could go. There was no escape, no end, no release. There was nothing but this, stretching out into an endless, shapeless future.

There was a hand on his shoulder. A shudder rippled through him from head to toe, jerking half away from it, but it did not move away. Fingers pressed into muscle like hooks in his flesh.

It had been so long since anyone had touched him without the intent to hurt. It had been so long since he had allowed them to.

Some piece of him that had been falling since that moment on Caragdûr when he had spoken the truth now hit the ground, and shattered.


End file.
